Characters: Everyone who's anyone. Meaning the kiddos and the teacher(s, possibly.)Content: For being such losahs, they get to be in remedial classes. And there they will be. Like the Breakfast Club! Kind of.Setting: The classroom.Time: Morning.Warning: Nothing so far...

Dr. Flaggle-floo took a look around the classroom. It was not a good start to her morning. She didn't particularly want to be stuck in this classroom with the delinquents of Starcademy for who knows how long it would take them to become functioning students. Days? Months? No one could say. But oh well. Duty was duty. And this was hers. It takes a village to raise a child! And one badass Dr. Flaggle-floo to whip a few kids into shape. That was how she looked at it, anyway.

She got up from her desk and gave the students a very teacher-y look that said "I am about to address the classroom now, so sit down and shut up." Then she spoke.

"Hello, class. I am Dr. Flaggle-floo, and you are all here because you failed all of your classes last semester. I don't care about how or why that happened, I care about getting you all back on the right track so you don't flunk out. Because everyone is a special delicate flower. And you four just need extra time to blossom. Let's see... we have Snorlax Band from Earth; Misa 164 from Andromeda; Trenton Gansley from Earth, and Selyna from... it doesn't say. Ugh. How bothersome. Anyway, is that all of you?"

Her eyes darted around the classroom a few times before Misa hestiantly answered, "..I'm here." It didn't seem like quite enough to say so she added, "Misa. The Andromedan." Belatedly realizing that was probably obvious, she bowed her head a bit so that her red curls would fall over her ears. At least this way, she didn't look like she was implying the good doctor was blind or couldn't recognise a former Galactic Enemy Number One when she saw one.

Snorlax lifted his head up. It was early still, so he was catching some extra sleep. He figured he'd probably missed something important. He'd gotten the part where he failed all his classes, and he wasn't looking forward to relaying that news to home.

... Unless they already knew. Great. He put his head back down.

Wait... she said his name. And the girl next to him said "here." That probably meant roll call. He tilted his head back up a little. "Snorlax here." Ugh, why did he have such a stupid name...? what he needed was a nice normal name. Like Thomas.

Trenton didn't really hear a word the professor said, as he had far more important things to place his attention on. Instead of focusing on Dr. Flaggle-floo, he instead focused on the game of Solitaire he already had started a few minutes before. After all, whatever lesson or assignment the teacher had in store could wait until AFTER he won a game. Or five. Unfortunately, it was soon after the role call that he found himself stuck.

Misa's situation was getting more terrible by the moment! It was bad enough she'd flunked everything..oooh, how they were going to be mad at her at home..but now she was in a brand new group. One member was asleep, and she couldn't fathom how he could sleep with the pounding of the other boy's fingers on his compupad!

Didn't they know the group couldn't function without the equal contributions of all their members?!

Now people were talking, and Snorlax was having a difficult time sleeping. So he sat up. "Is everyone here a morning person? You're all making it really hard to sleep. Why don't we all just take a nap? It will make us more prepared to learn because then we can face the day with fresh eyes and bright faces or something." That being said, he put his head back down on the desk.

Selyna regarded her fellow classmates cooly, unsure why the teacher had included her in the group of students who had failed their classes. It wasn't her fault that her teachers had realized she was a telepath and had automatically assumed she had cheated on every test. It also wasn't her fault that she was not very good at this strange planet-dweller language. Her foster-father had tried to teach her, but some things just weren't in her nature.

She shrugged her cloak off of one shoulder and raised her hand at her name, dipping her head once at the teacher to acknowledge her attendance. She largely ignored the blushing Andromedan, the sleeping human, and the inattentive human. Somehow this hardly seemed just.

It was official. None of these kids did know how to function in a group environment. They couldn't have been raised very well. Any deaf hatchling would know that it was obviously not sleeping time or compupad time! Which lead Misa to the conclusion that she was not sure what time it was...detention time, obviously, but what did that entail? Her first horrid thought was perhaps Dr. Flaggle-floo had told them what they were to do and she somehow missed it in her filtering of unwanted noise? Teachers are not unwanted noise! Unless they are the teachers in the other classrooms and that's confusing.

Misa opened her mouth to ask, snapped it shut and repeated about three more times, looking something like a gasping fish.

Dr. Flaggle-floo sighed. "Well, it's good to know you're all here. In body, anyway." Then she pulled out a whip and cracked in on the floor. "NOW BE ATTENTIVE!!!!!" Feeling pretty sure that she had the attention of the kids again, she spoke. "Your first assignment is to write an essay about just who you all think you are. One page. Single-spaced. And don't do stupid things like using the word "very" twenty-five times or just slapping words down because you think I won't read them. Because I will."

Trent was not expecting something like this, which COMPLETELY ruined his game. With a cry of "Bloody Hell!" Trent dropped his Compupad to the floor. Ooh, he really hoped that didn't hurt it too much. Upon listening to the professor's instructions, Trent thought it all over, and decided that well, HE knows who he is, and if the teacher REALLY wanted to know who he ws she could just ask and get the answer verbally rather than have him spend extra time writing it all down. And so, he came to a mental verdict of "No, I'd rather not be doing that, thank you," and picked his compupad back up, examining it for scratches.

Snorlax scoffed. "No. She wants you to write a paper about why you think you're so awesome that you can get away with failing all your classes. I guess. Some crap like that." Snorlax was, for the most part, awake now. "It's all bullshit. She seriously can't expect us to do this."

Besides just not wanting to write the paper, Snorlax didn't want to because when he tried to grasp for who he was... he drew a blank. Compared to the rest of his family, he was nothing. He had accomplished nothing, besides failure. And that bothered him more than a little.

Dr. Flaggle-floo, apparently deciding that she had given them enough torture for the moment, left the room.

Upon noticing Dr. Flaggle-Floo's departure, Trent set down the compupad, took a real deck of cards out of his pocket, and decided to take a look around the classroom at his fellow companions for once, and decided to speak out.

"Well honestly, doing something like this doesn't really provide any real purpose that she couldn't figure from asking, does it? Seems rather wasteful of paper to me...So then! Who's up for a game of Beggar-My-Neighbour?"

"Now isn't the time to play games! We are all here together for a reason and just because you don't think that what we're supposed to do has a purpose doesn't mean we can just all just drop it! If it didn't have a purpose, it wouldn't have been assigned! I'm going to do my work and I really think you all should, too! Just think, if we were Stardogs and had stations on a spaceship and no one did their job, everyone would die! You should think of it like that!" Her tirade finished, Misa dug through her bag for her school supplies and made a show of placing her things on her desk.

"My name is Misa," she dictated aloud as she wrote, "and...um..I am myself. Whoever that is." She went silent, looking at her desk as though it had betrayed her. "The group next door gets to talk about xenobiology. Lucky."

Trent was about to reply back to Misa's tirade, but then shrugged it off figured there really wouldn't be much of a point in it. So instead, he opted to ignore her and let her do her thing, and turned instead to the other two classmates.

"Well then, I suppose she's out. What about you two? Better than wasting good energy on rubbish like this, am I right?"

"I am finished this assignment," she said, holding up her compupad for everyone to see.

In large green letters were the words: I AM A GUARDIAN.

She put the compupad down calmly on her desk and folded her arms into her cloak, noticing not for the first time how warm these planet-dwellers like to keep their habitations. She longed for the openness of space, not the company of these obvious delinquents. Except for the Andromedan. The girl intrigued Selyna, that she was trying so hard when the other two obviously cared so little.

Trent just kind of stared at Selyna for a while, then burst out with a bit of an amused and interested chuckle at what he saw on the compupad.

"Well, isn't that a fine way to cut the corner! Though, I do suppose that four words is at least closer to a page than none, but still, it'll probably get teh same grade as nothing, so why bother? But regardless, now that you're "finished" (Yes, he actually did the quotation movements with his fingers) you have no reason not to accept a good game then, do you? What do you say?"

Snorlax took a moment to organize his thoughts. "Okay, first, I don't know what the hell Bugger-My-Neighbor IS, and if I did I probably wouldn't want to play it."

"Second, I don't see the purpose of doing this essay. So what happens if we don't write it? We're already in detention. What is she going to do now? Kick us out of Starcademy?" He laughed at the thought that occured to him. "Whip us, maybe?"

He calmed himself down, then shook his head. "No. Seriously. I think we should sneak out. We could make hologramm dummies of us or something and then find something interesting to do."

"She might kick us out of Starcademy if we leave!" Misa said shrilly! "The teachers have the authority here, they have every right to kick us out if we aren't doing our part! Being kicked out is the most horrible, horrible, horrible thing ever and I think we should stay here and did you know the Rigelians only colonized Umbriel but not Ariel? That's weird. Are Uranus's moons really that different? I don't know because I failed geography!"

"It's BEGGAR-My-Neighbor! A game about buggering neighbors really wouldn't be one fit to be played in an academy, now would it? Honestly!"

He then thought over the rest of what Snorlax said, and beamed

"However, sneaking out does sound like a capital idea! Not really much fun that can be had in here, that's for sure...though that whole hologram dummy thing sounds like a wee bit too much work for me. Any other ideas?"

"STAYING! Staying and doing your work and not getting all of us in trouble!" By this time, Misa's compupad read as a jumble of information about herself, her people and random things influenced by the study group next door--the biology of Rigelian-Saturnians, Uranus' colonization and that some girl apparently nicknamed "Jules" had a new haircut that was not very flattering.

"You both," she gestured pointedly at Snorlax and Trent, "are only thinking of yourselves and its all four of us who will suffer for it! You should take the good example of me and that other girl--" Misa turned to Selyna, "I'm sorry, I did not catch your name unless its Dominique but I kind of doubt it because if it was the people singing Happy Birthday would have been in here instead of the cafeteria." She returned her focus to the boys, "Our example and maybe write about who you think you are. I think both of you are trouble-makers. Though she should write a little bit more, maybe, because four words is not a page and we don't know what's she's guarding or any other good information like that."

Trent was very confused at the huge jumble of apparently-useless information mixed in with what she was trying to say, leading to him sporting a very perplexed expression.

"...Are you absolutely bonkers? I mean, seriously! For one, I don't know what in the blazes you're talking about with all of this Birthday and Rigelian nonsense, which leads me to think you have some kind of voices in your head, which right there hurts your credibility. And second of all, how would what I or he do affect what happens to you? If YOU choose not to leave the class or to go ahead and do boring stuff, especially if that's fun for you, then by all means go along! You won't be punished for what others do if you're obedient! But if I want to lead a more pleasurable time and not do such inane pointless things, that's my choice to make, now isn't it? Besides, this really is something that if the teacher REALLY wanted to know, she'd just ask me herself instead of wasting all of our time with having us waste good effort writing it all! So really, I don't mind if you wish to do your work, but please, spare me the lectures or any chance to prevent me from doing what I wish. And really, what's the trouble in just playing around? Perhaps in a different situation when you're not so stuffed up with ideas of work, you'd like to try a game? They work wonders to ease tension, you know!"

"If you're both such good examples, why are you here in the first place?" Snorlax scoffed. "And Trent, that's your name, right? She doesn't hear voice in her head. She just has hearing times a billion. Don't be stupid. And stop asking people to play games with you! We don't want to play a game!!"

He was feeling very frustrated. He might've actually put forth the effort to write the stupid essay, if he had any idea what to write. What was he supposed to say? 'I think I'm Snorlax Band, the failure of my family. My sisters are both amazing and smart and Stardogs and I'm failing all my classes. Anything I think I'm good at, they have done and done a million times better.' But then, no. That was just a asking for pity and he didn't want that.

Snorlax got out of his chair hastily. "Just forget this. I'm not sticking around here. You don't have to come with me. I just thought I'd offer." And with that he made a bee-line for the door and slammed it behind him.

Trent was just a wee bit pissy now, and was now muttering more to himself than to anyone in particular. "Well, really! I was just offering! A friendly sport, don't you know, but I suppose this is the result you get when you try to extend fun to others! I suppose I'll just have to play alone some more then."

And thus, he grumbled and picked his compupad back up and began playing some more.

Selyna blinked at the sound of the slamming door and turned to Trent. "First of all, I do not know how to play your game. I am not familiar with planet-dweller methods of entertainment."

She turned her gold eyes to Misa. "To answer your question, my name is Selyna."

Finally, she glanced down at the four words she had written on her compupad. "I do not understand. She asked us to write one page, and I have written my words on one page. She did not specify a word length for this assignment. I am a Guardian. That is not who I think I am, but who I am. Arguing will not change that. I do not understand why you are so upset. Misa, there is nothing physically preventing you from leaving the room, is there?"

She glanced out of the window at the stars shining outside. How she yearned to be there, and not in this strange place with these strange creatures. But she promised her father she would remain.

"How long are we expected to remain in this room?" she said at last to no one in particular.

"Well...no, there's nothing physically preventing me from leaving, but I'm supposed to be here. There are more reasons to do things than just objects. Society and people and the things you know from interacting and listening are just as important, probably more. If I was here because someone told me to be here and if I was here because there was a boulder in front of the door..those things are totally different.

"We're all together now because we messed up and as long as we're together, that makes us a group. And that means we have responsibilities to each other. Like...the study group next door..all of their members are responsible for the important parts of different classes and they share it with everyone. Just because we don't know what our responsibilites to each other are just yet doesn't mean that we can ignore each other or abandon each other.

"Maybe we're only together in detention today or maybe we'll be a group every day, I don't know. But we still are together. Right now, we have a responsibility to Snorlax. If Dr. Flaggle-floo or someone finds him, then he'll get in trouble. And that's something we can prevent if we go after him and bring him back. The longer we stay, the less chance we have of catching him."

She stopped speaking and really concentrated on what she could hear, trying to find the footsteps that would most likely be Snorlax.